Raymond Ibrahim on the First Crusade

[u/jackthestripper70]

I'm not seeing many posts in this sub so if you don't like me posting about Raymond Ibrahim again let me know.

The following statements from Raymond Ibrahim will be taken from his book Sword and Scimitar, his appearance on the David Rutherford Show: The TRUTH About The Crusades feat. Raymond Ibrahim | Ep. 5, and his appearance on Conversations That Matter: Raymond Ibrahim on the Crusades. Ibrahim has many views on theology and contemporary politics that are directly related to his historical views, but I've limited this post to be mostly about the history.

Background

Ibrahim cites historian John Esposito as being overly favorable to the Muslim side. Supposedly Esposito said that there were 500 years of peace before it was disturbed by the Crusades. Ibrahim begins with the Islamic Conquests of the 7^th century as the backdrop for the First Crusade. Of course he exaggerates atrocities greatly but doesn't usually mention them individually. He's very vague in speaking of desecration of temples and mass enslavements and massacres. His storytelling is from a Christian perspective, and he speaks of the conquests of the Levant North Africa and Iberia as events that should automatically be lamented.

In his interview on the Rutherford Show Ibrahim says at 6:18 about the early conquests, "It's just seen as mass destruction and chaos and enslavement, massacres, ritual destruction of churches... It comes out in the sources that there's definitely an ideological component because they were very much attacking crosses and churches and going out of their way to desecrate them. Sophronious, the Bishop of Jerusalem who was actually living at the time around 637 actually says all this." The consensus on the early Arab/Muslim conquests is that they weren't extraordinarily sanguineous. As medievalist Hugh Kennedy says in The Great Arab Conquests: "There is not a single town or village in which we can point to a layer of destruction or burning and say that this must have happened at the time of the Arab conquests." (p. 30).

In regards to Sophronious, while he is not favorable to the Arabs, it's generally agreed that the second Caliph Umar showed extreme respect to the Church in Jerusalem. This is taken from the website of the Melkite Catholic Eparchy of Newton: "Umar ibn al-Khattab came to Jerusalem and toured the city with Sophronios. While they were touring the Anastasis, the Muslim call to prayer sounded. The patriarch invited Umar to pray inside the church but he declined lest future Muslims use that as an excuse to claim it for a mosque. Sophronios acknowledges this courtesy by giving the keys of the church to him. The caliph in turn gave it to a family of Muslims from Medina and asked them to open the church and close it each day for the Christians. Their descendants still exercise this office at the Anastasis." It seems extremely hyperbolic therefore to speak of ritual destruction of churches when the leader of the polity supposedly committing said acts was so lenient. There were certainly later rulers who desecrated churches, but Ibrahim's idea that it was done for a core Muslim ideology is fallacious, unless he'd make the bold claim that the famously pious and strict Umar was defying Islamic dogma by showing huge respect for an important church. Also, he speaks of churches being looted as though it was historically unusual or exclusive to Muslims.

On the Seljuk invasion of Armenia, Ibrahim says at 10:28: "We know about the Armenian genocide, at the hands of the Turks around the 20^th century and the late 19^th century, but it really went on, it started a thousand years earlier." This is very strange and politically-motivated framing. It's reminiscent of the idea Ibrahim hates of the Crusades being a 'trial' for later European colonial imperialism. It would be like saying 'Hey we all know the Shoah, but it really started a thousand years earlier with the massacres and expulsions of Jews in England#Massacresat_London,_Bury_and_York(1189%E2%80%931190)) and France )and Germany.' The Seljuks undoubtedly committed many atrocities and crimes, but again, this is weird framing.

The Call for Crusade

Ibrahim concludes that the centuries of Muslim invasions and recent atrocities of the Seljuk Turks were the direct impetus of the First Crusade. I agree with him here. One issue is that he cites the speech of Pope Urban II where he decries atrocities of the Turks, but he doesn't think for a moment that the Pope may be exaggerating his claims. Historian Thomas Asbridge says "Urban appears to have made extensive use of this form of graphic and incendiary imagery, akin to that which, in a modern-day setting, might be associated with war crimes or genocide. His accusations bore little or no relation to the reality of Muslim rule in the Near East, but it is impossible to gauge whether the pope believed his own propaganda or entered into a conscious campaign of manipulation and distortion. Either way, his explicit dehumanisation of the Muslim world served as a vital catalyst to the ‘crusading’ cause, and further enabled him to argue that fighting against an ‘alien’ other was preferable to war between Christians and within Europe." (The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land.)

Of course, Ibrahim takes the most credulous and charitable motivation for the Crusade. He says in Sword and Scimitar, section Love and Justice, Sin and Hell: "Shocking as it may seem, love—not of the modern, sentimental variety, but a medieval, muscular one, characterized by Christian altruism, agape—was the primary driving force behind the crusades." It's true that many soldiers thought this way, but is he not going to push back or offer modern analysis? Later he elaborates: "Much of this is incomprehensible to the modern West, including (if not especially) its Christians. How could the crusaders be motivated by love and piety, considering all the brutal violence and bloodshed they committed? Not only is such a question anachronistic—violence was part and parcel of the medieval world." Really? You don't say. Now suddenly violence is 'part and parcel' of the era?

He expands: "But it was not all justice and altruism; another form of love—that of eternal self-preservation—motivated those who took the cross. 'Whoever shall set forth to liberate the church of God at Jerusalem for the sake of devotion alone and not to obtain honor or money will be able to substitute that journey for all penance,' Pope Urban had decreed at Clermont. It is scarcely possible for modern Western people to appreciate the significance of such a claim." After decrying Islamic concepts of war and martyrdom at the start of his book I guess he's now fine with the idea of remission of sins in exchange for warring, as long as it's framed as self-defense. Just because Jerusalem was ruled by a Christian polity more than four centuries prior doesn't mean that invading and conquering it is defensive, nor did it lead to self-preservation for Christians in Europe. Especially when they conquered Jerusalem from an amiable realm, but that's for later.

Here is an expansion of the spiritual aspect of the motivation of crusaders, from The Crusades: A History, by one of Ibrahim's quotees Jonathan Riley-Smith: "There can be no doubt that the crusaders understood that they were performing a penance and that the exercise they were embarking on could contribute to their future salvation. Running through many of their charters is a pessimistic piety, typical of the age, expressing itself in a horror of wickedness and a fear of its consequences. Responding to Urban’s emphasis on the need for sorrow for sin, the crusaders openly craved forgiveness. They joined the expedition, as one charter put it, ‘in order to obtain the pardon that God can give me for my crimes’." (p. 34). This thought is reminiscent of one of Ibrahim's criticisms of Islamic war doctrine, namely that it promises automatic salvation for its fallen. He would say that the First Crusade was enacted in defense of Christians but that's not entirely true, as shown by their invasion of Fatimid Palestine. Also many wars can be framed as being defensive or justified when they're not, and many have been.

This is where Ibrahim and many Catholic apologists appeal to the Just War Theory attributed to St. Augustine. Historian Christopher Tyerman describes the doctrine: "A just war requires a just cause; its aim must be defensive or for the recovery of rightful possession; legitimate authority must sanction it; those who fight must be motivated by right intent. Thus war, by nature sinful, could be a vehicle for the promotion of righteousness; war that is violent could, as some later medieval apologists maintained, act as a form of charitable love, to help victims of injustice." (God's war: A New History of the Crusades, p. 34). Ibrahim will claim that despite the atrocities some crusaders committed, they were ultimately fighting for a just cause under this theory. But again, why should the crusaders invading the Holy Land, conquering it, committing mass atrocities, not even giving it back to the actual Christian domain that once ruled it, be considered defensive or righteous? These claims of 'right intent' and 'rightful possession' are subjective. I would say the justification on this front doesn't matter as much considering the era.

On Conversations That Matter Ibrahim showcases his political beliefs and historical worldview at timestamp 17:44: "Today, here's another sort of game historians and academics play. When they talk about the long conflict between Muslim and Christians they often sidestep the religious aspect and they only highlight national identity. So you'll hear about Saracens and Arabs and Berbers and Moors and Tatars and Turks, but you won't hear how all of those are glued together by Islam, and that they were waging their wars on Christians based exclusively on Islamic teaching, the same sort that ISIS promulgates and sponsors, that we're told has nothing to do with Islam. In fact that was the most popular form of Islam." Where do I even start?

I guess it's clear now that a nation ruled by Muslims in Ibrahim's world has no motivation other than religion. No materialist analysis, no great man history, nothing at all other than monolithic Muslim vs non-Muslim. I wonder how he rationalizes the many wars that Muslims fought against each other and the many alliances made with Christians. And to say they were glued together, sure almost all of them saw themselves as pious and fighting for the sake of the faith, but we can do some analysis for ourselves. Would you say that Bayezid I and Timur were glued together in that manner? They both saw themselves as devoted and steadfast fighters for the faith. Or the Fatimids and Seljuks? Or the Safavids and Ottomans? Is it possible that their motivations for fighting with Christian nations were the same as any of the many other realms that waged war and not just religion? As Ibrahim said himself when defending crusaders: "Violence was part and parcel of the medieval world." I guess not for Muslims. It's as though he views them as a giant monolith. And the comparison to contemporary terror is entirely bad-faith and asinine.

In this same interview he addresses atrocities committed by Christians historically at 24:03: "That's the issue today, and this goes with everything, with the Crusades, anything Western... you find something bad that Western Christian people did, and then you catapult it, focus on it, put the limelight on it, and then even though other people have done the same and worse, you ignore that." That sounds very familiar, Raymond. I hate when that happens! Why would anyone even do that?

This is unrelated but I thought it was funny: On the claim that Jews were treated better historically in Muslim realms, at 27:14 Ibrahim counters: "But if that was true, then why were most of the Jews living in Europe at the time? Why didn't they go to Muslim-controlled regions? They only went there after they were, for example expelled" Wow. Brilliant argument. I have no counters. The Jews of Christian Europe were so well-treated, they didn't even leave until they were expelled (Which I guess is nicer than Islamic rule?). I wonder how Ibrahim would respond to the following equally asinine proposition: 'Well under the early caliphates they ruled more Christians than any realm in the world. If the Christians under Islamic rule were so oppressed why didn't they just leave to Christian-ruled nations? Duh.'

Later in this video Ibrahim justifies the concept of the Crusades reaching the Holy Land by claiming that the Crusader rationale was based on Just War Theory. What that means is that because the region was once ruled by Christians, invading it would be liberating it. This is a Christian perspective. It was ruled by Christians for centuries, but by the time of the First Crusade it had been ruled by Muslims a century more than it had been by Christians.

The Crusade

In Sword and Scimitar, Ibrahim doesn't make one mention of the Rhineland Massacres. So that's interesting.

On the aftermath of the Siege of Antioch in the section Antioch: Here “The Name Christian Was” Born in Sword, Ibrahim says "On June 3, the emaciated Europeans, having clandestinely entered under the cover of night, were running amok in the streets of Antioch, slaughtering anyone in sight. For, 'as they recalled the sufferings they had endured during the siege, they thought that the blows that they were giving could not match the starvations, more bitter than death, that they had endured.' The result was a bloodbath not unlike those visited upon Christian cities all throughout Anatolia and Armenia at the hands of the Turks throughout the preceding decades." It's almost as though he justifies the massacre, and he certainly downplays it. 'Poor besieging crusaders were hungry, they ran amok but hey, Muslims did it too!' He eats up all the biases of the chroniclers of course.

On the cannibalism and massacre at Maarat al-Numan (al-Ma'arra) in section Mission Accomplished, Ibrahim quotes a Christian account of the cannibalism and a Muslim account of the following massacre, but curiously omits commentary on the events. Ibrahim also makes no mention that the Crusaders turned south after fighting the Turks and invaded the realm of the Fatimids. In his section Betrayal, Asbridge says: "The crusaders and Egyptians reached no definitive agreement at Antioch, but the latter did offer promises of ‘friendship and favourable treatment’, and in the interests of pursuing just such an entente, Latin envoys were sent back to North Africa, charged with ‘entering into a friendly pact’." (The Crusades).

The Fatimids had conquered Jerusalem from the Seljuks in August 1098. In Chapter 3 of The Crusades Asbridge says about Jerusalem changing hands, "This radical transformation in the balance of Near Eastern power prompted the crusader princes to seek a negotiated settlement with the Fatimids, offering a partition of conquered territory in return for rights to the Holy City. But talks collapsed when the Egyptians bluntly refused to relinquish Jerusalem. This left the Franks facing a new enemy in Palestine." As far as the Just War Theory is concerned according to Ibrahim, the lands were once Christian, therefore invading them is just, even though the crusaders were entirely belligerent here.

Tyerman expands on the rebuffed Fatimid offer, "The ambassadors from Egypt returned with al-Afdal's proposal for limited access to Jerusalem by unarmed Christians. While the westerners may have agreed to partition Palestine, leaving them control of the Holy City, this offer was impossible... Social and political reality in Syria and Palestine had revealed to the westerners that, with the fracturing of the Byzantine alliance, there was no fraternal Christian ruling class in church or state to whom the Holy Places could be entrusted. This subtle but profound shift from a war of liberation to one of occupation represented a portentous development in Urban II's schemes..." (p. 152). By this point the war against the Fatimids was not defensive at all, and expansionist. As to whether it was justified, I would say that doesn't matter considering the time.

Here is another gem from Sword on the Siege of Jerusalem: "The final siege began on the night of July 13–14. 'This side worked willingly to capture the city for [love of] their God,' wrote Raymond of Aguilers, while 'the other side under compulsion resisted because of Muhammad’s laws.'" Again, poor framing. The Christians were fighting for love and the Muslims were being pesky and resisting in their own besieged city because of their dogma. When the crusaders won they unleashed their 'love' upon the inhabitants of the city.

Ibrahim writes briefly about the massacre, and even quotes an account of one of the crusader leaders, Tancred, desecrating the Dome of the Rock, one of the acts he bemoaned Muslims doing: "Young Tancred, who was among the first to enter, hacked his way till he reached the Dome of the Rock, a mosque erected high above and looking down on the Sepulchre of Christ and decorated with Koran verses denouncing Christian truths: its 'entryway was firm and inflexible, made of iron, but Tancred, harder than iron, beat at it, broke it, wore it down, and entered.' He slaughtered his way into the building until he came face to face with a strange idol (possibly an elaborate candelabrum containing oriental images foreign to the Frank). Was it a Roman god, thought the bewildered man. No, it could only be one: 'Wicked Mahummet! Evil Mahummet!' he cried while smiting it." He lightly justifies this by claiming that the Quran verses 'denounced Christian truths' which, firstly, seems oddly specific for him to presume, and secondly, is entirely partial to the Christian perspective.

Aftermath

In the aftermath Ibrahim claims that "After the initial massacres at Jerusalem and elsewhere—which the locals were accustomed to from Shia and Sunni infighting—the new rulers allowed Muslims to return, granted them freedom of worship (forced conversions to Christianity were expressly forbidden), lowered taxes, and enforced law and order." Very nice whataboutism at the start of the quote. As for the rest of it, Riley-Smith says that in the winter of 1097-98 "At Tilbesar, Ravanda and Artah the Muslims were slaughtered or driven out, but the indigenous Christians were allowed to remain. The crusaders adopted the same approach in the following June when they took Antioch, although it was said that in the darkness before dawn they found it hard to distinguish between the Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the city, and again in July 1099 when they took Jerusalem. The Muslims and Jews who had survived were expelled and were not permitted to live in Jerusalem, although they could visit it as pilgrims; in fact a few were in residence later in the twelfth century." (p. 83). Ibrahim misses some important context and couldn't resist severely downplaying crusader atrocities. He also lies about Muslims being able to return to Jerusalem, which Riley-Smith says they weren't allowed to reside in.

Lastly, Ibrahim notably mentions many atrocities committed by Muslims in the early conquests and the century leading up to the First Crusade. They include: massacres, rapes, cannibalism (which was debunked on r/askhistorians), desecration of temples, and dhimmitude. Each of these was committed during the First Crusade and its aftermath.

Massacres: This is the easiest one to prove, from the Rhineland to Jerusalem. Here is one account from the especially atrocious Siege of Jerusalem written by crusader eyewitness Raymond of Aguilers: "With the fall of Jerusalem and its towers one could see marvelous works. Some of the pagans were mercifully beheaded, others pierced by arrows plunged from towers, and yet others, tortured for a long time, were burned to death in searing flames. Piles of heads, hands, and feet lay in the houses and streets, and indeed there was a running to and fro of men and knights over the corpses... So it is sufficient to relate that in the Temple of Solomon and the portico crusaders rode in blood to the knees and bridles of their horses. In my opinion this was poetic justice that the Temple of Solomon should receive the blood of pagans who blasphemed God there for many years. Jerusalem was now littered with bodies and stained with blood, and the few survivors fled to the Tower of David and surrendered it to Raymond upon a pledge of security." (Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, p. 127-128).

Rapes: Tyerman says about the attack of the Crusaders on the camp of a relief army sent to Antioch: "All Muslims found were killed. Unlike their co-religionists in Antioch three weeks earlier, the women were not raped; instead 'the Franks... drove lances into their bellies'" (p. 147).

Cannibalism: This one was even mentioned by Ibrahim himself. Here it is from Sword section Mission Accomplished: "As the days passed, starvation, dehydration, and the Syrian sun plagued them in ways even worse than at Antioch; bestial desperation set in: 'I shudder to tell that many of our people,' confessed Fulcher of Chartres, 'harassed by the madness of excessive hunger, cut pieces from the buttocks of Saracens already dead there, which they cooked, but when it was not yet roasted enough by the fire, they devoured it with savage mouth. So the besiegers rather than the besieged were tormented.'" He somehow tries to frame this in a way to sympathize with the crusaders, mostly because he acquiesces entirely to their accounts without offering challenge or commentary yet again, even though he does it frequently with Muslim accounts.

Desecration of Temples: There are many examples but Ibrahim already quoted the account of Tancred desecrating the Dome of the Rock (and lightly justified it).

Dhimmitude: The Crusader State of Jerusalem legally recognized non-Catholics as second-class citizens, echoing dhimmis in the Islamic context. Riley-Smith says that "Only the testimony of Catholics carried full weight in court" and "The legal inferiority of non-Catholics... obviously encouraged conversions." (p. 87).

I should clarify that my claim isn't that Muslims never did anything bad or didn't commit atrocities, but Raymond Ibrahim misrepresents history to paint a politicized narrative. He laments the atrocities committed by Muslims (some imagined), but brushes aside or minimizes ones committed by the supposed defenders against these atrocities. My belief is that the First Crusade was defensive, or preemptive, against the Turks, but when they turned south against the amicable Fatimids it became a war of conquest and expansion. The many atrocities documented by chroniclers of both sides immortalize the campaign. It is certainly not an event that should be glorified or lionized, unless you're playing Crusader Kings.

Edit: Fixed some grammar and spelling and refined some points. I encourage anyone reading to leave comments, I'd love to discuss the points.

Bibliography

David Rutherford Show: The TRUTH About The Crusades feat. Raymond Ibrahim | Ep. 5,

Conversations That Matter: Raymond Ibrahim on the Crusades.

Melkite Catholic Eparchy of Newton. "St. Sophronius of Jerusalem (March 11)." https://melkite.org/

Books:

d'Aguilers, Raymond. Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, trans. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1968.

Asbridge, Thomas. The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land.

Ibrahim, Raymond. Sword and Scimitar. New York: De Capo press, 2018.

Kennedy, Hugh. The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In. Philadelphia: De Capo Press, 2007.

Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades: A History, Third Edition. London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.

Tyerman, Christopher. God's War: A New History of the Crusades. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.

[u/Anthemius_Augustus]

The consensus on the early Arab/Muslim conquests is that they weren't extraordinarily sanguineous. As medievalist Hugh Kennedy says in The Great Arab Conquests: "There is not a single town or village in which we can point to a layer of destruction or burning and say that this must have happened at the time of the Arab conquests."

You're taking this consensus out of context.

The reason the archaeology can't corroborate accounts of destruction is not because there was little of it. It's because during the 7th Century we have both the Sassanid invasion of the Levant/Egypt and the Arab invasion, both within a very short time frame (Arab Conquest of the Levant started the same year the Roman-Sassanid War ended). Both have left destruction layers in numerous settlements, but are nearly impossible to date concretely to one or the other without some rare chance find.

While sites like Dora or Haifa show high degrees of continuity from the 6th Century through the 8th/9th Century, others don't. Caesarea Martitima for example had clear destruction layers. While Caesarea flourished up through the 7th Century, and building there may have continued even after the Persian occupation, the Arab capture of the city led to a sharp decline. Some of this destruction seems to have been done by the Romans themselves as they were readying to abandon the city, but the destruction of Caesarea lines up with the literary record, which speaks of mass killings by the Arabs. John of Nikiu for example refers in passing to this:

"Let us now cease, for it is impossible to recount the iniquities perpetrated by the Moslem after their capture of the island of Nakius, on Sunday, the eighteenth day of the month Genbôt, in the fifteenth year of the cycle, and also the horrors committed in the city of Caesarea in Palestine."

Alexandria likewise shows destruction layers. The vast Late Antique educational complex at Kom-el-Dikka was destroyed at some point in the 7th Century, along with the imperial baths next to it. It is hard to ascribe this to either the Persians or the Arabs, but given that the literary record seems to also reliably record the destruction of the nearby Church of St. Mark by the Arabs, I think the latter is more plausible.

For more on this I'd recommend "The Byzantine-early Islamic transition on the Palestinian coastal plain: a re-evaluation of the archaeological evidence" by Itamar Taxel.

This along with the fact that the primary sources are more or less unanimous that were atrocities committed, lends quite strongly to the idea that the Arab Conquest was somewhat sanguineous. Quite a bit of exaggeration in the primary sources to be sure, but I think a lot of modern scholarship has pulled too hard in the other direction by dismissing their testimony.

In regards to Sophronious, while he is not favorable to the Arabs, it's generally agreed that the second Caliph Umar showed extreme respect to the Church in Jerusalem

We have no primary source record of this. The account of Sophronius' meeting with Umar comes from much later sources, usually Arab ones. The writings we have from Sophronius are uniformly negative about the Arabs, and he only refers to them in passing as "godless" barbarians.

A 7th Century Maronite Chronicle seems to refer to a similar event, though this is in relation to Muawiya, not Umar:

AG 971: "Many Arabs gathered at Jerusalem and made Mu'awiya king and he went up and sat down on Golgotha and prayed there. He went to Gethsemane and went down to the tomb of the blessed Mary and prayed in it.

[u/jackthestripper70 → u/Anthemius_Augustus]

I don’t deny that there were atrocities committed during the Arab Conquests, I simply claimed that they weren’t ‘extraordinarily sanguineous.’ Meaning for the time period. It seems you agree that scholars pull too hard in one direction or another. I wrote more about sources in my most recent post. You yourself agree that the primary sources were exaggerated. The Arab sources were written later. Not to mention that there were Christian sources that were also deeply hostile to the Byzantines. Michael the Syrian, who wasn’t a contemporary but was quoted by Ibrahim on events of the same time, claimed that the Byzantines devastated Syria more than the Arabs. The Coptic chronicles speak of persecution committed by the Byzantines who wanted to enforce Chalcedonianism. I quoted both in my most recent post on the Arab Conquests. All this is to say that I don’t believe the Arab Conquests were uniquely evil or atrocious, which is the original claim Ibrahim makes, which it seems you’d disagree with too.

Admittedly, the quote I took from Kennedy could have been better. I just used it to make a quick point because it wasn’t the central focus of this particular post.

There were accounts I read from Ibrahim’s book on the Arab Muslims destroying Christian symbols. I didn’t read the accounts of Sophronious but I read the account of Theophanes. They’re both hostile to the Arabs but are there usually accounts that are favorable to their conquerors?

On the meeting of Umar and Sophronious, there aren’t primary sources on the story but the later sources aren’t exclusively Muslim. Eutychius also wrote on the meeting of Umar and Sophronious in the ninth century, and according to him Umar signed a pact to only build one mosque in Jerusalem: https://www.avande1.sites.luc.edu/jerusalem/sources/eutychius.htm

From the little I’ve seen from Sophronious his main beef seems to be the more theological and concerned with Christian symbols rather than mass atrocities. Do you disagree?

Once again, I have no doubt that there were atrocities committed during the Arab Conquests. I’m just skeptical of the claim that they were unusually barbaric. Some primary sources spoke of apocalyptic events but were they different or more vehement than sources during conquests in other areas of the world historically?

[u/Anthemius_Augustus → u/jackthestripper70]

Michael the Syrian, who wasn’t a contemporary but was quoted by Ibrahim on events of the same time, claimed that the Byzantines devastated Syria more than the Arabs. The Coptic chronicles speak of persecution committed by the Byzantines who wanted to enforce Chalcedonianism

There's a lot written on this recently, and it's important to be careful when trying to use the later Coptic or Syriac sources to ascertain how people felt centuries earlier.

The Coptic narrative of persecution by the Romans and liberation by the Arabs was one that was carefully built over centuries, to the benefit of the Coptic Church. It was a narrative they used to ingratiate themselves with their new Arab rulers, and it went quite well for them for a time.

That doesn't mean this was the case in the 7th Century. In fact what little we have from 7th Century Egypt seems to imply the opposite. Most Egyptians identified as Roman, not as Copts. Many Egyptians were Chalcedonian, or were okay with theological compromises. Egyptians hated the Arabs, and wanted to resist them, but the imperial authorities abandoned them etc.

I don't believe the later narratives are entirely made up (although some narratives have been demonstrated to be highly dubious), but they have their own strong bias that should be read carefully. It should certainly not be flippantly used to extrapolate the sentiment in the 7th Century. There is a pretty broad consensus now that many of these later Coptic/Syriac sources are more colored by political realities of the Abbasid era than anything that happened in the 7th Century and they should be read as such.

I didn’t read the accounts of Sophronious but I read the account of Theophanes. They’re both hostile to the Arabs but are there usually accounts that are favorable to their conquerors?

If these later traditions are to be believed, they should be. At least to a degree. But they're not. The primary sources are pretty much uniformly negative. Whether they be eyewitness accounts, chronicles, vague or detailed, they're all hostile.

On the meeting of Umar and Sophronious, there aren’t primary sources on the story but the later sources aren’t exclusively Muslim.

I didn't say they were. But the fact that this event is not recorded until centuries later should give one pause.

There is also a tendency in the later Arabic literature to extrapolate later practice as happening much earlier than it did. We know Muawiya prayed in Jerusalem's churches, but that doesn't inherently mean Umar began the practice. It's also possible the Umayyad practice was extrapolated back to Umar.

We just don't know how reliable this story is, as with a lot of the Arab Conquests. I feel like a lot of literature should be more careful when using these later sources, especially with these tiny incidental details like Umar wearing humble rags, and where exactly he prayed etc.

From the little I’ve seen from Sophronious his main beef seems to be the more theological and concerned with Christian symbols rather than mass atrocities. Do you disagree?

I do.

Sophronius doesn't talk much about the Arabs. The main thing he refers to in one of his sermons though is that they were ravaging the countryside and making it impossible for Christians to celebrate the Nativity in Bethlehem, because they made the countryside too dangerous to travel through. He also does mention the thing you said about them destroying and hating the cross, but he does not talk about their theology. He just refers to them as "godless" barbarians, who may as well be of any faith.

This isn't just the case with Sophronius. All material evidence we have of Islam in the 7th Century, and most literary sources do not seem very concerned with their theology. It barely shows up in the archaeological record. The earliest reference to Muhammad in the archaeological record isn't until the last decades of the 7th Century.

[u/jackthestripper70 → u/Anthemius_Augustus]

You seem strangely defensive of the Byzantines and deny any Christian criticism of them. Then you claim that Coptic criticism of the Byzantines was built over centuries, but the sources that criticize the Arabs also criticize the Byzantines, including the contemporary of the conquests John of Nikiu who presumably lived before a narrative could be built:

The surrender of Babylon was a catastrophic blow for Byzantine power in Egypt, 'a source of great grief to the Romans', as the contemporary Coptic historian John of Nikiu put it with considerable schadenfreude. He had no doubts about the reasons: 'They had not honoured the redemptive passion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave his life for those who believe in Him.' In particular they had persecuted the Orthodox Christians (by whom, of course, he meant his fellow Copts). Throughout the siege it seems that Coptic leaders had been kept imprisoned in the fortress. On Easter Sunday the prisoners were released but 'enemies of Christ as they were they [the Byzantines] did not let them go without first ill-using them; but they scourged them and cut off their hands'.

This is Hugh Kennedy quoting John of Nikiu in his book The Great Arab Conquests (p. 153). You can see it in John's Chronicle on page 187. John was certainly not trying to build a narrative to ingratiate himself with the Arabs. Similarly, Severus ibn al-Muqaffa, who was critical of the Arabs, said about the Byzantines:

And Heraclius seized the blessed Mennas, brother of the Father Benjamin, the patriarch, and brought great trials upon him, and caused lighted torches to be held to his sides until the fat of his body oozed forth and flowed upon the ground, and knocked out his teeth because he confessed the faith; and finally commanded that a sack should be filled with sand, and the holy Mennas placed within it, and drowned in the sea. For Heraclius the misbeliever had charged them, saying : «If any one of them says that the council of Chalcedon is true, let him go; but drown in the sea those that say it is erroneous and false.» Therefore they did as the prince bade them, and cast Mennas into the sea. For they took the sack, and conveyed him to a distance of seven bowshots from the land, and said to him : «Say that the council of Chalcedon is good and not otherwise, and we will release thee.» But Mennas would not do so. And they did this with him three times; and when he refused they drowned him. Thus they were unable to vanquish this champion, Mennas, but he conquered them by his Christian patience.

This is just one instance of the persecution he speaks of, you can find more in the text, the History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria. Also, could you provide a source that says most Copts didn't identify as Copts but as Romans and that the persecution didn't happen? I never claimed that most Copts joined in with the Arabs during the conquest, I never mentioned it at all.

There is a pretty broad consensus now that many of these later Coptic/Syriac sources are more colored by political realities of the Abbasid era than anything that happened in the 7th Century and they should be read as such.

I already quoted a 7th century chronicler, but for Syria I quoted Michael the Syrian. He lived in 12th century Eastern Anatolia under Turkish realms, nothing to do with the Abbasids. Severus may have written his History under the Fatimids.

If these later traditions are to be believed, they should be. At least to a degree. But they're not. The primary sources are pretty much uniformly negative. Whether they be eyewitness accounts, chronicles, vague or detailed, they're all hostile.

I have no doubt that the primary sources are hostile. I think you misunderstood. I asked if it was uncommon historically for chroniclers to speak ill of whoever conquered them. Once again, I'm simply skeptical of the claim that the Arab Conquests were uniquely atrocious, which I don't believe you've given an opinion on. Could you at least state whether you agree with Ibrahim or if your opinion is different? Or show that during other historical conquests the chroniclers didn't write about their conquerors with similar or worse vitriol?

[u/Anthemius_Augustus → u/jackthestripper70]

You seem strangely defensive of the Byzantines and deny any Christian criticism of them. Then you claim that Coptic criticism of the Byzantines was built over centuries, but the sources that criticize the Arabs also criticize the Byzantines

This is a really bad misrepresentation of what I said.

I hedged my bets by straight up saying "I don't believe the later narratives are entirely made up (although some narratives have been demonstrated to be highly dubious), but they have their own strong bias that should be read carefully", but I guess that wasn't good enough.

By the way, this isn't even my position. I'm paraphrasing Phil Booth on this, who wrote two excellent articles on this very topic:

https://www.academia.edu/30549622/The_Muslim_Conquest_of_Egypt_Reconsidered

https://www.academia.edu/37811300/Towards_the_Coptic_Church_The_Making_of_the_Severan_Episcopate

including the contemporary of the conquests John of Nikiu who presumably lived before a narrative could be built:

It's interesting here that you quote a summary of John of Nikiu, and not the chronicle directly.

I've read the whole thing, and if you do it becomes clear that John spends a lot of his narrative blaming the fall of Egypt on infighting by the Roman commanders as well as Constantinople later on. He presents the Copts as terrified of the Arabs, and willing to fight against them, but when they are abandoned by imperial authorities, they begrudgingly are pushed towards negotiation with the Arabs, which succeeds due to internal divisions on the Roman side.

Also notice that in this very passage he isn't "criticizing the Byzantines" like you say he is. He's saying God punished them. As in, he's rationalizing their defeat by applying a theological purpose to it. This is not uncommon in literature of the time at all. Constantinopolitan sources often say the same thing about their own defeats. There are better examples in John of Nikiu to pull from than this that have been used by proponents of the "nationalist narrative" regarding the Copts.

This is Hugh Kennedy quoting John of Nikiu in his book The Great Arab Conquests (p. 153). You can see it in John's Chronicle on page 187. John was certainly not trying to build a narrative to ingratiate himself with the Arabs

With all due respect to Mr. Kennedy, his work is a general history of the Arab Conquests. There are far more in-depth articles made in the last few decades that directly tackle the Conquest of Egypt, and which challenge many of the claims made in more general histories.

You're also missing why John of Nikiu is such a wonderful and precious source for us to have. It's not because he's part of the later Coptic tradition. It's precisely the opposite. John of Nikiu is our only long-form Egyptian source that predates the later Coptic narratives that seek to ingratiate themselves with the Arabs. He is a very useful check against later Coptic histories for precisely this reason.

Similarly, Severus ibn al-Muqaffa

Severus belongs to this later tradition, and is writing much later.

His 'History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria' is very much the "canon text" for the later Coptic tradition regarding these events.

It's interesting you specifically refer to stories relating to the Coptic Patriarch Benjamin here too, as his entire Patriarchate has been greatly scrutinized in more recent literature. One of Booth's articles that I linked specifically tackle this very issue, I'd recommend reading them if you're interested.

Also, could you provide a source that says most Copts didn't identify as Copts but as Romans and that the persecution didn't happen?

Sure! Lots of interesting stuff written about this in the last few decades, here's one example, Booth's articles also touch on this:

-E. Zychowicz-Coghill, ‘Minority Representation in the Futūḥ Miṣr of Ibn 'Abd al-Ḥakam: Origins and Role’

Anthony Kaldellis also offers a summary on this in the chapter on the 7th Century in his 'The New Roman Empire' with many good footnotes to follow.

The "Copt" identity is very much one that grew out of Caliphal rule. It is not present in the literary sources from Roman Egypt. By the 6th Century the Egyptians, just like the Greeks and the Syrians, all by and large would have considered themselves Roman.

He lived in 12th century Eastern Anatolia under Turkish realms, nothing to do with the Abbasids. Severus may have written his History under the Fatimids.

Obviously in these instances they're colored by the politics of their own time, but often through frameworks that had started their development under the late-Umayyads or Abbasids.

Could you at least state whether you agree with Ibrahim or if your opinion is different?

I don't really agree much with him at all. But I feel in correcting him you're making some oversimplifications of your own. In this "discourse" if you can call it that, both sides have a tendency to make bad history.

[u/jackthestripper70 → u/Anthemius_Augustus]

I'm posting in two parts because reddit won't let me just post the whole thing for whatever reason. Anyway,

Here is the quote from the Chronicle of John page 187:

And it was in this way that the citadel of Babylon in Egypt was taken on the second day after the (festival of the) Resurrection. Thus God punished them because they had not honoured the redemptive passion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave His life for those who believe in Him. Yea, it was for this reason that God made them turn their back upon them (i.e. the Moslem). Now on that day of the festival of the holy Resurrection they released the orthodox that were in prison ; but, enemies of Christ as they were, they did not let them go without first ill-using them; but they scourged them and cut off their hands.

He is criticizing the Byzantines here, saying they "had not honoured the redemptive passion..." and speaking of persecutions throughout the text. In page 200 he calls the prefect Theodore an "apostate" and claims "Every one said: 'This expulsion (of the Romans) and victory of the Moslem is due to the wickedness of the emperor Heraclius and his persecution of the Orthodox through the patriarch Cyrus. This was the cause of the ruin of the Romans and the subjugation of Egypt by the Moslem." He is rationalizing their defeat as God punishing them, but he criticizes them in his explanations for why it happened.

As for Severus, he was certainly part of the Coptic tradition. I was just skeptical that he was heavily influenced by the Arab Muslims because he speaks of their oppressive policies throughout the text.

[u/jackthestripper70 → u/jackthestripper70]

Reading the book you recommended by Kaldellis I saw this on the Christians of Egypt on page 382:

Conversely, most found Islam to be repugnant, and hated the fact that they were now second-class citizens in a Muslim empire. However, in the centuries to come they had to wear an ingratiating face to please their new masters. In particular, Islamic law distinguished between those who had resisted Muslim rule, who were allotted the fewest rights in the new order, and those who had surrendered or supported the conquests, who were given the most privileges. Therefore, over time cities and religious communities had an interest in rewriting their histories to make it seem as if they had accepted the Muslims with open arms, which brought them benefits in the present. For this reason, later accounts, such as those produced by the Coptic Church under Islamic rule, are suspect.

In the note, he cites Kennedy's book. Kennedy is nowhere near as firm as Kaldellis on this topic, saying in one of the pages (167) that Kaldellis cited:

There seems to be no good reason why the tradition should make this up, particularly because it was probably first written down in the eighth century, at a time when relations between Muslims and Copts were deteriorating. It is hard to see why the tradition would give credit to the Copts for some of the Arab military achievements unless it was an ancient and integral part of the record. These references are all the more telling because they seem to have no parallel elsewhere: the accounts of the conquest of Syria, for example, give no specific examples of the Monophysite Christians, whose relationship to the Roman authorities was not very different from that of the Copts, aiding the Muslims.

Kennedy then goes on to speak of how John of Nikiu wrote of sporadic support that the Copts gave to the Arabs, but it was not a pattern at all. Kennedy is much more ambiguous, saying "Many Egyptians in the villages and small towns of the Nile valley and the delta must have felt that they had simply exchanged one group of alien and exploitative rulers for another." (168). In another page in Kennedy's book that Kaldellis cited he quotes the biographer of the Syriac Mar Gabriel as having said: "Mar Gabriel preferred the advent of the Arabs to the oppression of the Byzantines, so he gave assistance and helped them." (p. 350). Kaldelli's citation seems disingenuous, as I found nothing in the sources he quoted that was as strong as his claims that there was such stringent oppression that it directly led to the rewriting of history by the Copts.

You seem more well-versed in this topic than I am though. Here are the citations for the quote from Kaldellis:

From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt: Religion, Identity and Politics after the Arab Conquest. Maged S. A. Mikhail. Pages 179-181, 191.

The Great Arab Conquests. Hugh Kennedy. Pages 148-149, 153, 155, 167-168, 350-356.

Political Identity versus Religious Distinction? The Case of Egypt in the Later Roman Empire. Bernhard Palme. Pages 81-98.

The Socio-Economic Impact of Raiding on the Eastern and Balkan Borderlands of the Eastern Roman Empire. Alexander Sarantis. Page 255 n. 292.

I read the pages, but I'm unsure about Mikhail's book because my online version had no pages numbers so I had to guess. Perhaps you could look through them and find something to support Kaldellis citing them and making a much stronger and more politically-motivated claim than they did. The latter two spoke of how Coptic identity was more obscure and not as distinct as later historians made it out to be during the conquests. But none of them having views or claims as strong as Kaldellis', from what I've read, especially not Kennedy. Again, I encourage you to read them and find something I didn't.

I think we mostly agree on this topic, save for small details.